Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

dam...i might actually step foot in the sahara for the first time since '11 when i was in there for a whole 2 min..ahhhhh

Originally Posted by mncarpooler

Anything that's not Sahara tent trash is going to have a small crowd it seems like. I wandered over near the Sahara once all weekend and it was a clusterfuck of the douchiest looking people you could ever imagine.

Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

I would not call their show a "raver" show in the usual Sahara sense at all. For example there are actual instruments being played... I guess it's more new rave, but Sahara almost never has anything that isn't EDM, DnB, house, tech house, dubstep, etc etc.

Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

Originally Posted by electrocute

I would not call their show a "raver" show in the usual Sahara sense at all. For example there are actual instruments being played... I guess it's more new rave, but Sahara almost never has anything that isn't EDM, DnB, house, tech house, dubstep, etc etc.

LUL.

How is this different than any other EDM track? (no disrespect to the track, or EDM for that matter)

Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

I see your point, kind of, but that is one track... they have many others that are not as EDM-ish as that. They have live instruments and vocals, that alone makes them different from 95% of Sahara fare. I could definitely have seen them being in there in 2008, but since then Sahara has moved to almost entirely having producers and DJs, not bands.

Anyway, I am interested in seeing the giant spectacle in there, I'm pretty confident it will be better than their Outdoor set in 2011. The Sahara itself is very impressive, it's just that I usually don't care for the stuff they put inside.

Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

i was very much looking forward to this set, would be one of the highlights of the weekend for me. then i did some poor planning and i didn't make it to the sahara until about 5-10 minutes before their set, just to find the tent packed to the gills and overflowing more than any set i'd seen there the whole weekend. decided right away to nope the fuck out and try to get there early next weekend. getting out of the general area was a fucking disaster. people were not friendly at all.

i've not heard much about the actual performance. i've heard people say the place was infested with bros, that there were some people pickpocketing, nick offerman had to lay hands on some guy who disrespected his lady. was it really that bad? did any space open up as the set went on? were people into it? was it really worth having them in the sahara?

Re: so is Empire of the Sun playing the Sahara tent a joke?

Empire of the Sun was one of my top 5 sets of the weekend. It might have been because it was my first time seeing them, but they still lived up to the hype. For all those saying the Sahara was the wrong stage for them, you are wrong. Their performance couldnít have been better anywhere else. The Sahara was the perfect venue for their spectacle. Since we missed their Shrine show, Steph and I were determined to see this from relatively close.

Their set started just as we were passing through the huge bottle neck of humanity as you get close to the back of the tent. But it opened up quite nicely along the back right and we ended up walking all the way outside the tent to the second to front right door, where we made our way through close to the center with a good view of the stage. As others pointed out, it really opens up once you are inside. Yes, the doors were bottlenecks too and you really had to go with the crowd flow, but there were enough people leaving that it only took a few minutes to get through.

I felt like the crowd inside was more appreciative than anything else. It felt like they had been trapped in all the Sahara cheese for two straight days and were getting a fucking awesome live show that they didnít deserve, but they seemed pretty damn grateful, singing along, dancing, and having an awesome time. Lots of smiling, lots of glow sticks, lots of hits.

Iím sure we got bumped by a bro or two, but it certainly wasnít memorable enough to write up a brotique. As long as the bumping isnít constant, I can handle it and I donít worry about Steph because she can handle it too. We were there for EOTS and their performance was pretty memorable.

Great setlist, great stage performance, which must be expensive as hell, and ending with Alive might have been one of the best songs of the weekend.